A slide fastener typically is formed by a pair of longitudinally extending and parallel textile tapes having confronting edges that carry interleavable coupling elements. These elements, which are typically made of a synthetic-resin coiled or meandered monofilament, do not extend the full length of the respective tapes and are joined together at their one ends by a so-called bottom end stop and each carry at their opposite ends a so-called top stop. A slide can move along both elements and is constructed such that on longitudinal movement from the bottom stop toward the top stops it interleaves, that is joins, the two coupling elements, and on opposite movement it separates them.
Such fasteners are made as described in commonly assigned and copending patent application in a mass-production operation starting from a basic workpiece comprised of two very long parallel tapes whose confronting edges carry full-length coupling elements that are usually joined together. In a first machine a gap is formed in the joined coupling elements, same being cut away or otherwise removed for short distances at locations spaced along the tapes by the length of the fasteners to be made. Then the bottom end stops are fitted to the joined coupling elements at what is normally relative to the direction of travel of the tapes the trailing edges of each gap. A slider is then fitted to the elements from the leading edge of each gap, being slid on in a direction tending to separate the elements. Subsequently the top stops are applied to the separated coupling elements immediately downstream of the slider at the leading end of each gap. The tapes then are cut transversely across generally through the center of the gap, separating out the individual fasteners. Finally the individual slide fasteners are bundled together, provided with some sort of wrapping, and labeled for sale.
As described in German patent document No. 2,154,548 filed 03 Nov. 1971 the fasteners are delivered longitudinally one after the other to the packing machine whose input is constituted by a speedup conveyor running at a speed that is many times faster than the arrival speed of the fasteners. This multiplies the travel speed of the fasteners and delivers them to a crosswise bundling conveyor which runs continuously in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction the fasteners are moving in as they arrive. The crosswise conveyor therefore moves the fasteners transversely so that they bunch up in a pile against a stop plate. A counter on the crosswise conveyor lifts the stop plate when a predetermined number of the fasteners have been stacked against it so that this bunch can be dropped onto a table where they are wrapped, labeled, and otherwise prepared for shipment in a manual process.
Such a procedure has several manual steps and is therefore not efficient enough to produce packs of the fasteners cost efficiently.